


True Zootective

by sanidine



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Case Fic, Cultural Differences, Friendship, Gen, Investigations, Mystery, Post-Canon, bad swears not approved by Disney, wash your mouths out with soap
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-30
Updated: 2016-05-02
Packaged: 2018-05-29 23:28:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6398587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanidine/pseuds/sanidine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a response to a noise complaint in one of Zootopia's outlying districts turns out to be anything but routine, Officers Hopps and Wilde find themselves caught up in an investigationinto the dark heart of the prairie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am really on the fence about rating this. I had it as M because of the language and some potentially disturbing content, but none of it is anything that I would have been shocked by as a teenager. I'm bumping it down to T for now, but if this bothers anyone please let me know

Officers Hopps and Wilde had busted a muskrat for distributing  _ Nepeta catara _ to minor felines two weeks earlier. With rookie Wilde’s first official collar under his belt, Bogo had put them back on ticket duty for a few days followed by some uneventful shifts speed trapping on the border of Tundratown. Lots of long hours sitting in the cruiser, drinking lukewarm coffee and passing the time until the next call. Nick moved Judy to tears of laughter by telling tales of increasingly outlandish cons he had run back in the day and Judy retaliated by seeing how many of the weeds growing in the road ditch she could identify by both scientific and common name.

Sure, there was a little bit of excitement here and there. Judy chased down a turnstile-jumping lemming, and they caught a teen polar bear in the act of spray painting the side of an Ungu-lattes Cafe. But putting the whole Night Howler fiasco and ‘face of the ZPD’ thing aside, the two were still the most junior officers in their squad. Which meant that they were the most likely to get the calls that no one else wanted to take.

“Unit 19? Umm...Unit 19, this is. This is dispatch, do you copy?” Clawhauser’s voice crackled out of the radio, followed by a long scrawl of static. 

Judy reached out for the receiver only to have it snatched out from under her pawpads by a sly fox.

“Ooooh, too slow Carrots.” Nick shot her a toothy grin before he pressed the button to reply “This is Unit 19, over.”

“Hello?” Ten long seconds of static, then “Hello? Can you guys hear me?”

Judy's nose twitched. “Bet you a pawpscicle he's still holding the button on his end.”

“No way I'm taking that rookie bet.” Nick scoffed. The cheetah was training with dispatch for a week at the request of Chief Bogo and so far the first day had not been going well. At all. “I think Finn’ll kneecap me if I end up owing him for anything els-”

“Unit 19?” Oh, geez, I don't…” Clawhauser  trailed off. The radio suddenly squelched a record breaking seven times in a row, then fell silent.

Judy was already fishing her phone out of her pocket when it started to buzz. The screen showed Clawhauser’s cheery smile, the first notes of the new Gazelle hit ringing out.  Judy tapped the screen and answered.

“You really shouldn't be using your personal phone for police business.”

“I’m sorry, I just can't figure this out.” Clawhauser sounded supremely stressed, and a little bit muffled. Judy could vividly imagine the way that he would be resting his face in his paw, clawtips digging anxiously into the fur on his head. “At least if you put me on speaker it's more like a radio, right?” 

Judy sighed, rolling her eyes up to the roof of the cruiser for strength as she balanced the phone on the steering wheel and pressed the speaker icon. They could hear the low chatter of the other radio operators in the background as the sound of Clawhauser’s breathing filled the car.

“Dispatch, you are now on speaker phone.”

“Hi Clawhauser.” Nick said, making his presence known “How's it going down in radioland?

“Just  _ awful _ .” The cheetah sighed heavily. “I miss all my friends from the  front desk and I can't even have snacks down here because they don't want any crumbs getting in the equipment. And it’s so loud that I - oh! That reminds me why I called!”

“What's that, Dispatch?”

“Got a call, a noise complaint out on Prairie Heights!”

“Prairie Heights?” Nick’s ears drew back in annoyance. “That’s all the way on the other side of the city.”

“I knooooow.” Clawhauser sounded almost as if he felt their pain. “But almost all the officers in District 8 are at a defensive driving course today!”

“There's seriously no one closer?”

Judy socked Nick in the arm for complaining, passed him her phone and pulled the cruiser onto the highway in the direction of Prairie Heights long before Clawhauser had finished talking.

“Well Rodriguez and Whitefur are, but they're following up on those llama identity thefts. Chief Bogo said you two were just speed trapping so I should send you. Please don’t be mad!”

It would be a long drive to Prairie Heights, but they had sworn to serve all the citizens of Zootopia - not just the ones who lived close by.The road was already starting to crowd a little with the beginnings got of the oncoming rush hour traffic. Judy wouldn't use the emergency lights to get them to something as low-priority as a noise complaint, but if they got a move on they might beat the worst of the crosstown traffic.

“No problem, Dispatch. What's the address?” 

\---

Prairie Heights was a grassland biome on the outskirts of the city, out a ways northwest of Tundratown and the Rainforest District. The central area of the town that they cruised through when they pulled off the highway was well developed, if a little bit dustier and more rustic looking than Downtown. A pair of young badgers were walking down the sidewalk with backpacks slung over their shoulders, talking animatedly as they passed by an elderly armadillo straightening the produce on display outside of her shop. An elephant posed and took a selfie on a street corner for no apparent reason as they drove by, while a miserable looking polar bear tried to hail a cab.

Soon the storefronts and businesses became more scattered, interspersed with newly built housing developments. Traffic thinned out dramatically. Unlike downtown Zootopia where everyone lived crammed together and tall buildings were the norm, mammals in Prairie Heights didn’t have to build any higher than one or two stories; there was plenty of room to sprawl. Plenty of white collar businessmammals who were willing to commute if it meant having a bigger yard. There was even a special unit at the academy about the relatively recent explosion in suburbs and subdivisions around the edges of the city.

Judy followed the directions on the GPS, passing by the neighborhoods with names like Summerbridge Estates and Woodspring Manor until they eventually they turned at a corner with a flashing neon sign that proclaimed it as the home of Prairiedog Pete’s Pizzeria. It was a brick building that clearly catered to rodents, given that it was smaller than the vehicle they drove by it. After that the road degraded slowly, turned cracked and patched, the yellow lines faded by the sun. Buildings became more sparse and dilapidated. A clutch of tiny trailers, whitewashed farmhouses, and the occasional tilting barn were the only things that broke up the view.

Nick looked out the window as Judy drove , took in the miles and miles of empty landscape as they reflected in his aviator shades. The sky was a startling shade of blue, cloudless above them. Of course there were the ever present thunderheads above the Rainforest District far to the south, but the smudge of dark grey on the horizon only made the blue of the sky and the waving yellow grass seem brighter.

“Is this even our jurisdiction?” Nick asked as Judy crawled along behind large, slow moving station wagon carrying a family of bison. It was the only other vehicle they had seen for miles and it had immediately dropped to 10 miles per hour under the speed limit upon noticing the cop car following behind. “No way this is still within city limits.”

_ “In one thousand feet, turn right.” _

“I'm surprised we even have signal out here.” Judy remarked as she cranked the wheel, not answering his question. They had come too far to turn back now. The potholed pavement gave way to a loose gravel road as they drove even further out into the prairie. Every so often the tires would snag across a place where the road had gone washboard, shaking her bones and clacking her teeth together. 

“Doesn't this seem a little weird to you?” Nick asked, looking over the top of his shades “Who out here would be calling in a noise complaint? Maybe in one of the neighborhoods we passed a while back, but it seems like all the mammals out here live miles away from one another.”

Judy shrugged even as she twitched her ears in agreement.“I was thinking that too. Maybe there’s a new development further out or another town down the road.”

There wasn't. 

If the prairie wasn't quite as flat as it looked at a distance, that wasn't saying much. Every once in awhile the road would dip into a low slough area dotted with low oak trees and scraggly bushes, but mostly it was miles and miles of waving grassland. But the seeming monotony of the landscape was a ruse - Judy counted at least seven different species of grass and there were bright constellation sprays of wildflowers dipping and swaying in the breeze, saltbush and feather-heads and sagebrush scattered across the fields. And the tumbleweeds. Because of course there were tumbleweeds.

One exploded into a cloud of twigs against the grille of the cruiser and Judy laughed. “I feel like I'm in a western.”

“A western what?”

“Movie?” Judy raised an eyebrow since she didn't want to take her eyes off the road to stare at Nick in disbelief. “You know, like Unfurgiven. Or The Mammal Who Shot Liberty Voleance?”

Nick just shook his head “This may come as a surprise to you Carrots, but little Nick didn't have a whole lot of money to blow going to see films.”

“I know you're an elderly old fox, but I’m pretty sure these movies came out way back before you were even a kit. Sometimes me and about fifty of my siblings would stay up late to watch them on TV. For some reason they only played the Dollars trilogy during harvest season so we were mostly too tired but there was ‘A Pawful of Dollars’, ‘A Few Dollars More’, and ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Pugly,’ which was always my favo-.” Judy sounded nervous and forced even to her own ears, and she was glad when the GPS cut her ramblings short.

_ “You are approaching your destination. In two hundred feet, turn left.” _

Nick’s fur stood on end as Judy pulled off the county road onto a narrow driveway. He couldn't pinpoint any one thing that was making him uneasy, but a lifetime of hustling had taught him to trust his instincts. The gravel crunched underneath their tires and kicked up a cloud of grey dust that flooded the still air and floated around the vehicle as it rolled to a stop. Leaving the cruiser parked but running, the two small mammals hopped out and down. Nick closed the door harder than he meant to, and the loud slam of metal made him wince as it rang across the open space. Judy twitched her ears. She could hear some insects humming and the rustling of the breeze blowing through the grass on the edge of the lot, but otherwise it was completely silent. No noise, and no one to complain about it even if there was.

A quick glance around the lot showed that whoever lived here clearly did not embrace the joys of homeownership. The medium sized single-wide trailer sitting in the middle of the wide area of gravel had seen better days. Vinyl siding that looked as if it may have once been blue had faded severely in the sun, turned the same light grey as the old satellite dish that perched on one corner of the roof. There was an empty clothesline and an abandoned plastic kiddie pool that had been flipped upside down in the yard, dark clutches of weeds that had been left to flourish where they had sprouted.

The door of the building wasn't big enough for an elephant or a giraffe, but it would have fit most mid-sized mammals just fine. It was standing ajar and the open gap wide enough that Judy could have slipped through without touching on either side. The two ZPD officers shared a look and moved in tandem without speaking, drawing their tasers as they padded up the stairs of the listing front porch and flanked the door, pressed their backs against the wall on either side. 

Nick reached out and rapped his knuckles against the door frame, shouted “This is Officer Wilde with the ZPD. Is anyone home?”

Silence was the only answer. He waited for a minute and tried again but there was still no reply

Judy’s ears were laid down flat against her head, the back of her neck prickling. That something was seriously wrong here went without saying, but she didn't know what it was. It felt like an ambush, but Nick would have smelled if there were mammals lying in wait to jump them and told her. Judy leaned around the corner and tried to peek through the opening, but it was too dark in the trailer for her to be able to see much of anything beyond the bare patch of wood floor that was illuminated by the light coming through the opening.

“I think we have probable cause for entry, don't you Officer Wilde?” Judy asked, and she waited for Nick’s nod of agreement before she ducked into the trailer, knowing he would be right behind her.

Their eyes adjusted quickly to the dimness inside the trailer and they saw that it had been stripped bare, not just of furniture and possessions but of  _ everything _ . Judy could see clear through the interior because the walls were just gone, the place seemed remarkably clean simply because it was so completely empty. There wasn't even any trash or signs of recent squatters. Aside from the faint breeze that snuck in through the open door behind them, the air in the trailer was hot and stagnant. Dust motes kicked up by their movement swirled lazily across through the patch of light.

The two of them made their way into the gutted structure, Nick going left and Judy going right to investigate. The walls had been stripped down to the studs and whatever wiring or plumbing may have once made it a functional home had been torn away. All the interior doors had been removed, and some mammal had been so diligent as to even remove the hinges from the doorframes. The carpet had been torn out of the main area to leave behind bare plywood. Judy stepped into what must have once been the kitchen - the appliances were gone, of course, but she could see the stub of a hookup for a sink. The tile at least had not been removed in here, and Judy looked through the skeleton of a wall to see that it had been left in the bathroom as well. No toilet or tub, though they would have been useless with all the pipes torn out. It occurred to her belatedly that the strangest thing about the scene aside from the obvious was that there was none of the debris that such major deconstruction should have left. The cleanliness was disconcerting. There weren't and loose screws rolling around underpaw, no bent nails left in the framing, no splinters of wood or drywall dust or -

“Judy.”

The rabbit spun at the sound of her name. She saw Nick clear on the other side of the trailer and bounded towards him, taser at the ready. 

Judy knew that something was off right away - Nick was looking into what had probably once been a shallow bedroom closet, but it was now the only part of the trailer left to be blocked off by drywall. The only area of the building that Judy couldn't see into at a distance. Whatever was in there...the fox had pressed one hand clamped to his mouth, the fur on the back of his neck raised in hackles, tail puffed out while his ears pressed down and back along the side of his head in a clear sign of trouble.

Nick looked up at her approach. “You aren't going to need that.” he said softly, twitching a paw towards the taser.

Judy holstered her weapon as she took the few final steps towards her partner. There was a flash of white in her peripheral vision as soon as she was in range of the open closet, and Judy couldn't stop herself even though she had a startlingly clear premonition that she would have been able to live a long happy life without ever seeing what was in that closet, but she was helpless to do anything other than to look.  Judy found herself staring into the eyes of...well not the eyes, she corrected herself mentally. The eyes were gone. Judy found herself staring directly into the empty orbits of a skull, one of the many that were stacked into a rough pyramid inside the closet that was almost as high as she was tall. Every one of them shining and alabaster. 

Picked clean.


	2. Chapter 2

Darkness didn't fall so much as it seemed to crash down onto the prairie. One moment the sky was streaked with hazy orange and yellow, and the next it was pitch black. The stargazing probably would have been top notch were it not for the bright headlights that flooded every nook and cranny of the yard. The cruisers had all pulled back to the perimeter, and the lights threw tall stalking shadows across the yard whenever some mammal passed in front of them.

Anything and everything on the site was being cataloged and collected, documented in place with pictures before being carefully sealed in plastic bags. The District 8 medical examiner was a high strung elk who had introduced himself as Vasilije, and he carried a set of truly enormous antlers that prevented him from entering the trailer. He had settled on hunching over so that he could stick his face through a window to micromanage the smaller mammals tasked with disassembling the pile of skulls. Nick and Judy leaned back against the side of their cruiser, watching as the forensic crew bustled. Neither had ever worked a case where this type of… cleanup was required. 

Most of the rodents and small mammals employed by the ZPD worked in forensics, their size making them well suited for collecting trace evidence. For a while Judy had chatted with a hedgehog in a white lab coat who had snuck out for a smoke break, and she had learned that the District 8 chief was calling in a squad of elephants who were trained specifically to use their hyper keen senses of smell.

“What makes you think drugs are involved?” Judy had asked

The hedgehog ashed his cigarette. Looking up at her “Drugs?”

“Yeah. That's what the elephants look for, right?”

“Nah.” The hedgehog seemed amused all of a sudden, thought Judy wasn't sure why until he added “The sniffers're gonna see if they can smell out the rest of the bodies. It'd be helpful for reconstruction, seeing as we only have the heads. If the bones are buried out here somewhere or in the fields the elephants should be able to find ‘em.”

With that, the hedgehog had wandered away, leaving Nick and Judy to wait by themselves on the perimeter.

It had been hours since the first District 8 officers had shown up and taken control of the scene, but the two of them had been instructed not to leave. So they waited. The season was edging towards winter for the grassland and the darkness had lowered the temperature at the same time as it kicked up the wind. It wasn't blowing all that hard compared to what it could do - Prairie Heights was renowned for its strong winds, and with the miles of open country the straight line winds could knock a mammal off their feet if the weren't careful. That night it was little more than a stiff breeze but Nick and Judy both still had their windbreakers on the guard against the chill, zipped up to their necks. Nick thought he looked pretty snazzy in his - the dark blue contrasted well with his orange fur - except for the giant, acid green ‘ZPD’ lettering along the back. 

“I didn't know the taxpayers had such shitty taste in jackets.”

“Well maybe if you'd paid your taxes they would've let you have some input Wilde.”

Some mammal had brought coffee for everyone who was working late on the scene, and Nick and Judy each gripped a steaming cup in their paws. The cups were oversized for them, more appropriate for a wolf than for a rabbit or a fox, but neither of them was complaining. There was no telling how late they would have to wait on scene. Judy cracked the lid on her coffee, blew on the liquid a little to try and cool it down enough to drink, but her fox partner just stared off towards the fields through the rising vapor.

Judy nudged him with her elbow “Penny for your thoughts?”

Nick took one of his paws off his cup and slapped it to his chest, miming a blow to the heart. But he still seemed distracted, not looking at her as he said “You wound me, Carrots. My thoughts are worth at least a dime.”

“Sound like you're trying to hustle me again.” Judy elbowed him again. Harder. This time Nick looked down at her and Judy just took a sip of her coffee, trying to hide her smile and look innocent right up until

“Knock it off Officers.”

The familiar voice startled them both to attention as they spun to see the hulking figure of Chief Bogo moving towards them. Bogo was being followed by a hulking male bison who was falling further and further behind the cape buffalo. 

The bison was in the middle of a conversation, phone sandwiched between his shoulder and his ear as he kept getting distracted by mammals with clipboards who needed his signature on various bits of paperwork. There was a pair of tiny glasses perched on the bridge of the bison’s nose, but even then he still had to hold the clipboards close enough to his face that his shaggy brown beard drug on the papers as he examined them.

“What is it with you two?” Bogo asked “Never would I have thought that the two smallest mammals on my squad would always find the biggest problems.”

Judy shrugged. “This one's your fault, Chief. Clawhauser told us you were the one who sent us out here.”

“Yes.” Bogo didn't even attempt to deny it. The chief could be gruff and hard to deal with at times, but Judy had long since gotten used to it. At least he was direct. “And now I've lost two of my best to District 8 for the duration of the case.”

“What?” Nick craned his head back to stare up at Bogo, ears flicked forward. “Why’re we being reassigned? We aren't Homicide.”

“ _ Temporarily _ reassigned.” Bogo clarified, shaking his head. “And you weren't supposed to be Missing Mammals or Narcotics either. You two were the first officers on scene, and you happen to have an excellent track record -” 

“It was, like, just the one thing -”

“- and Chief Ujarak wants you on it. He's going to pair you with some of his detectives for the investigation. He'll fill you in on the details.”

Chief Bogo looked over his shoulder then, noticing for the first time that the bison had been waylaid. “Chief Ujarak!”

The bison looked up from a sheaf of papers he had been given, clomped slowly over to the three of them with the phone still pressed to the side of his head.

“Yeah. Yeah. Ok, no. Let me call you back.” Ujarak jammed the button to hang up before whoever was on the other line could reply, stowed the phone interview one of his uniform pockets.”Sorry about that.” 

After that it was introductions all around. Officer Hopps and Officer Wilde both shook paws with the hulking mammal, fingers disappearing in his huge grasp. Ujarak’s size would have been intimidating if both of them weren't already used to being the smallest mammals in their department. He seemed a little more distracted than Judy was accustomed to with Chief Bogo (which, given the current circumstances, could hardly be held against him), but both Bovidae chiefs were cut from the same cloth when it came to their stern and brusque personalities.

“You two have already met with Latran and Sobol, correct?” Ujarak squinted down at Nick through the glasses. 

Up close Nick could see that they were bifocals with thin gold rims - Nick hadn’t had much interaction with bison in his previous life, but he knew that their terrible eyesight made them easy to scam. Theoretically.

“Who?” The fox furrowed his brow

“The two detectives on this case. They called me earlier to say that they were stopping by to get a first impression of the scene before forensics started dismantling everything…” Chief Ujarak had dug his phone back out and had started scrolling through the contacts on his phone while talking. Ujarak trailed off as he placed the call and looked off towards the trailer as he spoke, scratched absently at the curly brown fur at the base of one of his curved horns. It wasn't long until he had wandered off towards a uniformed rhinoceros  with another stack of papers.

Nick and Judy shared a look. No one had told them they were supposed to be meeting with the Prairie Heights detectives until Bogo had informed them of the plan moments before. The fact that the detectives they were supposed to be meeting with hadn’t taken the time to introduce themselves… it didn’t bode well for the case. The force had become more inclusive towards small mammals since Judy had become the first bunny cop, sure, but it seemed like some of the precincts still had a ways to go.

It didn’t get easier, being overlooked like that.

Chief Bogo cleared his throat, drawing their attention back to him. “I was informed that the scene in there was fairly grim.”

“Strange, more than anything else.” Judy mused, tapping one of her feet as she thought “Whoever left the skulls here did some serious work cleaning up everything else. The trailer was basically stripped down to the frame.”

Bogo flared his nostrils a bit, shook his horned head. “I meant the skeletal remains, Hopps. How do you...feel. About that. From what I've heard, all the skull recovered so far have been of a certain size.”

Judy’s nose twitched as she realized that this was Bogo trying to do feelings. To make sure that they were ok, not overly disturbed by the fact that skulls recovered so far had been of mammals closer to their own sizes than to large mammals like Bogo himself. Nick was dumbstruck at the fact that the Chief seemed to be worried about their emotional wellbeing. Sure, they knew the grumpy cape buffalo cared for them, but to have him come right out and almost say it was odd. 

Bogo must have misread the expression on the fox’s face because he continued awkwardly

“I don't want you to worry. The department has professionals you can talk to if you were. Upset. By what you saw today. And if it becomes known that the perpetrator is purposely targeting small mammals I can have you taken off the case.” Chief Bogo was getting a incensed about this supposed criminal, and he clenched a fist as he looked down at them. “I know that you two can handle yourselves, but I'm not going to lose you to some psychopath!”

“Um. Thanks, Chief. But I'm feeling alright about it so far.” Judy looked at Nick then, raising the eyebrow that Bogo wouldn't have been able to see. “What about you, partner?”

Nick shrugged, lounging back against the cruiser and taking a sip of coffee. “Yeah Chief, I'm fine.”

They were saved from having to continue the awkward conversation by the return of Chief Ujarak, heavy steps that kicked up little puffs of gravel dust under his hooves as he made his way back over to them.

“Alright.” Chief Ujarak was peering down at them again “Latran said you two were busy debriefing with Officer Simms when they were here. The plan now is to meet back at our station house tomorrow to get started on this. 7 am.” Ujarak’s deep voice rumbled as he spoke. “The two of you can get acquainted with Detectives Latran and Sobol and decide how you want to proceed. So it's up to you both if you'd rather stay out here for the night or go home.” 

“With all due respect Chief.” Nick took another sip from his oversized cup of coffee “I don't think either of us wants to stay at this crime scene all night. We aren't even being particularly helpful at this point.”

Ujarak raised his heavy brow, a look of confusion crossing his bovine face before “Oh, I didn't mean  _ here _ , here. The department will pick up a couple of hotel rooms at the Cactus Jack Motel if you don’t want to drive all the way back to the city center this late.”

“We appreciate the offer Chief Ujarak. But we'd better head home, at least for tonight.”

  
It ended up taking almost a half hour for Judy to ease their cruiser out from the jumble of police vehicles. She was a little jittery from the caffeine, her foot tapping impatiently next to the brake pedal as she waited to pull out onto the gravel county road. Then, like a bullet springing forth from the barrel of a gun, they were free. Neither one of them could even begin to anticipate what the case would bring, but in that moment it was just the two of them, flying forward, with nothing but the black, cryptic night and the long drive ahead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind of a slow chapter, there's more cool plot stuff in the next one I promise!


	3. Chapter 3

Judy pulled the cruiser up outside Nick’s apartment building the crack of dawn the next morning - they needed to get going early to get to the Prairie Heights station house in time for their meeting. Nick yawned wide, hiding his drooping eyelids behind the reflective aviator shades as he did his best to keep up his end of the conversation. Judy was from a farm family, used to waking up early from a lifetime of chores and harvests, but Nick was just not a morning mammal. At all. (Until he'd joined the ZPD, Nick had never had a reason to wake up early. What was the point? If there were no other mammals awake to hustle or run cons on then he would have just been sitting around twiddling his thumbs.) At least the traffic wasn't so bad in the morning. It wasn't until after they had arrived at the District 8 station house and Nick got a chance to stretch his legs in the parking lot that the fox started to feel awake.

Zootopia PD’s elegant solution for what could have been a never ending snarl of jurisdictional issues had been to develop a force where officers and detectives were assigned to primary districts while also having the authorization to act in any other districts as necessary. The system didn't shackle them to one area in case the line of duty had them crossing biome borders, but it still let a mammal develop a familiarity with their home turf. Judy knew from experience that even though the ZPD was regimented and standardized across the city, no two districts were quite the same. Each biome’s police station had it's own character, even if it was just little things that made it feel more cohesive with it's environment. 

The architects that had designed the station in Tundratown had utilized lots of white and ice - a somewhat predictable design move.  But they had also specially commissioned translucent ice sheets rigged to act as giant tablets that displayed important information in the lobby - urgent APB’s, public service announcements, dates of ZPD community outreach programs (‘Skate with an Officer’ was always a popular event). It was also notorious for the automated cleaning system - furred mammals on the Tundratown force had winter coats year-round, and the shedding was a nightmare. But if you stood still too long you were likely to have a roomba try to vacuum up your tail. 

The Sahara Center station was a colorful jewel in the desert, with brightly colored tile mosaics on the walls and lots of drinking fountains. The station in the Rainforest District was built into the trunk and branches of an enormous banyan tree, as if it had actually been woven into the very fabric of the biome community. But as far as Judy could tell, the most distinguishing characteristic about the Prairie Heights police station was it's lack of distinguishing characteristic. It was just… nondescript. 

The District 8 station was a rambling one story building, grey cinder block walls with very few windows and a sloping steel roof. It made sense when Judy thought about it - Prairie Heights was known for it’s violent winds and hail storms. The building was probably designed to withstand the unpredictable weather of the biome. It might have saved a lot of taxpayer money by not having to replace lots of glass or get a new roof each year, but Judy couldn't help but wonder if there really hadn’t been a more welcoming way to accomplish that objective. 

The inside of the building it was more of the same. A zebra behind the front desk was on the phone when they entered, but she must have been expecting them because she didn't even have to pause her conversation as she pointed them through a swinging door that led down a bland hallway. Very institutional. Lots of neutral colors. Judy and Nick passed a row of closed doors - labeled as interrogation rooms 1 through 4 - and took a sharp right turn. Then the two small mammals found themselves in an  open room with drop ceilings and a bunch of desks crammed together. Most of the desks were occupied already, with various mammals chatting and drinking coffee as they checked their phones.

Nick looked at the time on his own phone. “7:03. Right on time.”

“Not quite. He did say seven.”

“Don't want to make  _ too _ good of a first impression, Carrots.” Nick replied “Unless there's something you're not telling me. Are  you gunning for a permanent transfer? Because if we're gonna get promoted to detectives I'd much rather do it oh, you know. Back in civilization.”

Judy ignored Nick as a puma in a suit and tie approached them, her ears perking up as she asked the feline “We're supposed to be meeting with Chief Ujarak?”

“Officer Hopps and Officer Wilde, right?”  The puma looked down at them as they nodded. “Yeah, sorry about that. He had to go get ready for the press conference.”

“So are we supposed to wait for him? Or…” Nick trailed off

“Well, Detective Latran and Detective Sobol are already here. They're the ones you're supposed to be working with, right?” he continued “Bill was supposed to introduce y’all, but I guess I'll do in a pinch. I'm Detective Quintus, by the way.”

Quintus led them to a frosted glass door tucked into a corner of the bullpen. The inside of the conference room that they entered was simultaneously cramped and sparse - fluorescent lights threw a harsh contrast on the wood laminate table and chairs, a file cabinet, and the two large cork boards hanging from the wall opposite the door. One was empty, but Judy noticed that the other had a color coded map of Prairie Heights with the location of the crime scene marked with a black thumbtack. The two detectIves that had been waiting in the room sat together on one side of the table, caught up in a conversation that ended abruptly when Judy and Nick were escorted into the room.

Nick had once owed a not-insignificant amount of money to a porcupine bookie whose preferance ran towards using coyotes as enforcers. So it was saying something that Detective Latran was the largest coyote that Nick had ever seen, and a lady coyote at that. Don't get him wrong, Nick was all about defying species stereotypes, but. Damn. Latran was almost the same size as a wolf, although with the angular snout and bushy tail there would be no confusing her species despite her size. 

The coyote looked and acted like the stereotype of a burnt out old detective nearing retirement. Her shoulders slumped beneath a faded brown trenchcoat, muzzle and ears long gone grey around the edges. She ignored Nick and Judy completely when they attempted to shake paws after Hutchens did the introductions, not bothering to acknowledge them from where she was slouched at the table. Latran spent most of her time scratching notes on a yellow legal pad and not looking at anybody. It left a sour taste in Judy’s mouth, but it wasn't anything she couldn't deal with.

On the other paw, Detective Sobol seemed to be the antithesis of his surly partner. He was a striking looking pronghorn in his early 30s, barrel chested and thick bodied with long slim arms and hoof-tipped fingers that returned Judy’s handshake with confidence despite their size difference. Sobol’s short tan fur was brittle to the touch, distinctive white and black markings on his face and the part of his sturdy neck that was visible above the neatly pressed collar of his shirt. Sobol seemed engaged with everything, his curved ears swiveling attentively besides tall forked horns. However, talking to him was made awkward by the fact that one could never quite tell which way Detective Sobol was looking due to how his unusually large black eyes were positioned far to either side of his head.

“So, first things first.” Sobol said, once Quintus had left and they all sat down at the table. “The noise complaint call you were responding to when you discovered the crime scene. It came in on the non-emergency line.”

“So it wasn't recorded.” Judy completed the line of thinking, nose twitching. “Guessing the caller didn't give their name either.”

Sobol nodded “But the number of the phone that called was automatically saved in the data bank. I talked to IT and they're going to trace it. We also put in a request to the biome records office last night so we can figure out who owns the land and the deed on that trailer. Probably won't hear back from them until two or three o'clock at the earliest.”

“Why so late?”

“Well, the office doesn't even open ‘til nine. And there's a decent chance that those records haven't been digitized yet. Prairie Heights is a little bit behind the curve on the conversion.” 

“Really?” Judy had thought all the districts had gone digital years ago.

“ ‘Fraid so. And it’s not just the biome property records either. All our old case files, anything that dates back more than seven or eight years is still in paper form in the basement.”

Nick grimaced at the thought. Sobol caught his expression and laughed, looking a little chagrined.

“Yeah, tell me about it. The district keeps hiring mammals specifically to work on the scanning, but so far they've all ended up quitting after a couple of weeks. So for now it's left to the regular office staff to work on whenever they have the time.”

“Alright, so what do we do until then? This is the first time either of us have been attached to a homicide investigation. Multiple homicide.” Judy corrected herself “So I'm not really sure what the standard operating procedure is.”

“Well, the medical examiner will be by in a bit with his initial analysis of the remains. Species, age, cause of death if he could determine it.” Sobol hesitated, tapping one hooved finger on the table. “Now, I'm not trying to undermine you here, but-”

“What makes you so sure this is a homicide case?” Latran cut him off, speaking up for the first time. Sobol dipped his head towards his partner in acknowledgement.

“Exactly.”

Judy felt her nose twitch. “The two of you are homicide detectives, aren't you?”

“And, you know.” Nick added “The whole thing with the pyramid of skulls.”

“Could be they aren't real skulls. May be replicas. Plaster. Someone playing a shitty prank.” the pronghorn shrugged “Even if they are real bones, it doesn't necessarily make this a multiple homicide case. Could be the result of a series of grave desecrations.”

“Well,  _ have _ there been any recent grave desecrations Detective Sobol?” Judy tried to keep her tone polite, tried not to grind her teeth, but she knew did a poor job hiding her frustration.

Nick flicked her knee under the table, not looking at her.  _ Relax. Don't let them see you sweat.  _ But it seemed like Sobol didn't miss anything, despite the disturbingly wide set of his eyes.

“I think you misunderstand my intent here, Officer Hopps.” Sobol leaned back in his chair, seeming unbothered by her reaction. One of his ears swiveled as he stretched his skinny legs out under the table. “Part of why we're cooperating on this case is so that we can train you and your partner on how an investigation like this works. All the different factors at you have to consider before you go jumping to conclusions.”

“Alright, then.” Nick slid into the conversation easily, knowing that Judy was going to need a couple of seconds to cool down. The fox leaned forward on his elbows, steepled his paws and rested his chin on top of them. “If the skulls were fake, forensics probably would have told you already. But we can wait for the ME just to be safe. If they're real, once we know the species we can run a records search to see if there’s been a string of grave robberies.”

“Check the files on missing and runaway mammals otherwise.” All eyes went to Latran, who was busy picking under her claws and gave no indication that she was even aware that she had spoke up “Gonna want to go back a bit, unless our perp is working on a real accelerated timeline.”

“So, assuming that the skulls are real and it's not just grave robberies.” Judy rejoined the conversation, but Nick could tell she was still irritated by the set of her ears. “What's with the pyramid arrangement?”

“Not sure.” Sobol said “If we are dealing with a serial here, the shape probably has some sort of personal significance. The fact that they were arranged...the mammal responsible had probably been going back. Visiting.”

Nick craned his head while Sobol was speaking, trying to peek at what Latran had been writing down. Her lettering was beyond illegible, but she had switched to drawing a series of triangles, and then pyramids, after Nick had started spying. She drew an eye above one of them and added a squiggle that looked almost like a question mark to the side of the eye as Nick watched.  But before Nick could ask the meaning of it, the door to the conference room swung open. It was the medical examiner who had been on scene the night before, Vasilije. 

Neither Nick or Judy had gotten much sleep - in between staying late at the scene and driving back and forth from downtown there hadn’t been time for more than a couple hours rest. But the elk put them both to shame, looking as if he hadn't bothered to close his eyes at all since they had last seen him. Not even to blink. Vasilije had a crazed look about him as he entered, an enormous mug of coffee in one hand and a file folder of photos in the other. 

They could tell what was in the folder because a couple of the glossy images were starting to sneak out the edges, threatening to fall. Turning sideways to get his antlers through the door frame , the elk stooped and snatched one in between his lips to prevent it's escape. Vasilije navigated around to the head of the table and set his coffee down on the corner of the table with a heavy  _ thunk _ , carelessly sloshing a bit of the liquid over the rim. Then he snatched the picture out of his mouth and stuck it to the corkboard, started to hang all the pictures from the folder, not wasting a second om pleasantries.

“Wow, Mike. You look like shit.” Latran said, even though as far as Nick could tell she hadn't once looked up from her paper.

“Thanks Gloria. Thanks for that. With that type of observational skill you should consider going into police work. They might even make you a detective.” Vasilije griped back as he arranged the pictures. “You could stand to show a little gratitude, you know. I was only up all night analyzing the evidence from  _ your _ crime scene. But no, don't worry, it's not like I have my own life or three kids or anything so...”

With the last of the photos attached to the board, Vasilije stepped to the side so the mammals seated at the table could clearly see what had been laid out.

There were four rows of photos pinned to the board, spaced so evenly that Judy thought it looked like they had been hung by a machine rather than a mammal. The top row showed every angle of the pyramid as it had been when Nick had found it. The two rows beneath that were longer, reaching all the way across the board, and the photos showed each individual skull laid out next to a bright yellow number and scale bars to indicate the size. Finally, the bottom row showed close ups of some of the skulls, though Judy wasn't exactly sure what she was supposed to be seeing there.

“Nineteen skulls total.” Vasilije said, and drained what was left of his cup of coffee in one long drink. He coughed, had to tap himself on the chest a couple of times before he could continue. “ The elephants weren't  able to locate the rest of the bodies yet, so this is all I have to work with for now. Eighteen of them are some kind of rodent. Varying ages judging by the wear on the teeth - some were quite young, but a couple were old enough they were almost completely worn down. Couldn't get a concrete cause of death on any of them.”

“Excuse me.” Judy had raised her paw to get the elk’s attention, but when he didn't stop to acknowledge her she had just decided to interrupt him. “What do you mean, ‘some type of rodent’?”

“I  _ mean _ ” Vasilije raised an eyebrow at her, and continued as if he were talking to a very dumb mammal “That eighteen of the skulls are from rodents. Looks like at least two different species, but I'm not sure which yet.”

“Why not?”

“Be _ cause _ . Identifying small mammal skeletons is not my area of interest. I've requested the assistance of a rodentia specialist, but until then all you need to know about it is that eighteen of the skulls are from rodents. Any other questions.”

The elk’s flat delivery of the last bit made it clear that he wasn't really interested in anything else Judy had to ask, and she had to fight not to grind her teeth together.  _ All you need to know.  _ What a pretentious prick. What Judy  _ knew _ was that the species of the victims could very well be important, but Vasilije was clearly an asshole who obviously didn't care or try to learn any more about small mammals than he had to.

“Anyways.” The medical examiner continued, still glaring daggers at Judy as he waved towards the bottom row of photos. “At first glance, the rodent skulls were all in relatively good shape except for two outliers. One had been fractured and healed, probably from an accident that occured years before the death of the individual. The other showed some signs of metastatic bone cancer. 

“Upon closer inspection, all of the skulls we recovered had scrape marks. Some type of blunt instrument was used, probably to remove the flesh.” Vasilije untacked one of photos from the board, slid it onto the table so they could see what he was talking about. Patches of the bone had shallow grooves marked into them, flat and wide, cross hatched in some places but mostly parallel. 

Nick felt his stomach turn over at the thought. Some mammal had killed those rodents, painstakingly cleaned and arranged the remains. That was the type of thing that happened in horror movies, not real life. Vasilije didn't seem bothered at all as he continued

“The nineteenth skull is from a canid. Male dingo. And this skull was placed at the center of the pyramid structure - all the rodent skulls were stacked around and on top of it.” Vasilije reached out and tapped one of the pictures on the board as he spoke.  

“The dingo skull has the same type of scrape marks as the others, but it is also missing both front incisors. Couldn't determine if that occurred pre- or post-mortem, though judging by the amount of wear on the remaining teeth our dingo victim was at least middle aged.”

“Probably lost pre-mortem.” All eyes in the room turned to Latran. She had stopped scribbling notes and was staring at the lines of photos with her eyes narrowed.

“And how, pray tell, do you know that?” Vasilije sounded pissed again, glaring daggers at the coyote.

Judy had to reconsider her earlier analysis - the elk was still an asshole, but maybe it wasn't entirely size or species motivated. It seemed like he just hated whenever some other mammal knew more than he did. But Vasilije’s personal hang ups were much less interesting than Latran’s sudden insight.

“I know” Latran said “because, if that skull is from who I think it is, then I was there when it happened. Otis Lightrunner tripped and fell off the bed of a truck snout-first when we was nineteen. He’d had gold ones put in eventually, but whoever killed him must have taken them.”

“Are you sure it's him?” Sobol asked

“Moderately sure. Otis was the only dingo in the area missing his front teeth like that.” Latran tapped her pen as she spoke,  _ clack clack clack _ against the tabletop. “Besides. You know I grew up down the road from the Lightrunner compound.”

Vasilije muttered something under his breath that sounded like “ _ dingotown _ ”, but the large elk was ignored by the detectives.

“Oh, yeah.” Sobol glanced at the photos, then back at his partner “Wait, didn't you help file a missing mammal report on a dingo like three years ago?”

Latran nodded. “Sort of. I helped Mosser take the wife's statement when she came in.”

“And you remember all of this so well why, exactly?” Nick kept his tone mild, but he was definitely feeling suspicious. 

That a detective who was on the case had apparently not only had a personal relationship with one of the victims, but had also helped to file the missing mammal report for the same guy...the odds seemed astronomically low to Nick. Latran looked straight at Nick for the first time, and Nick thought that she looked almost approving of his suspicion.  _ Not just a dumb fox after all, huh. Try those critical thinking skills on for size. _

“I'm the only one in the department that's completely fluent in signing DSL.” Latran explained “Mosser knew a little, but not enough to feel comfortable taking a full statement.”

“In all the years I've been here, I can count on one paw the number of times a dingo has come to law enforcement for help. It was uncharacteristic. It stood out. So.”

“So…?”

“So.” Sobol stood then, straightened his tie with a wince after the chair screeched unpleasantly across the floor. “I'm gonna need to fill up the gas tank before we hit the road. Time to go let the dingoes know about their departed kin.” 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think from here I am going to try to stick with slightly shorter, more scene-like chapters. Good news is that I should be updating more frequently!

Nick hadn’t noticed it before, but Prairie Heights wasn't the featureless grassland that he had taken it for at first impression. The beauty of the biome was well hidden down a lot of winding, rutted gravel roads, but it was there. Too bad he couldn't really get a good look at anything due to the fact that Sobol drove like a freaking  _ maniac _ . 

If they wouldn't have been wearing their seatbelts, he and Judy would have been slammed around the backseat like so much spare luggage. As it was, the belts were locked tight across their chests, holding them in place as Sobol cranked the wheel and sped through another ninety degree turn. The posted speed limit was only thirty five miles per hour, but Sobol had to be doing at least fifty. Nick and Judy glanced at each other, sharing a meaningful look as their paws gripped the edges of the seat.

The detective's’ car was a dusty grey sedan with tinted windows that was more obviously a police vehicle than even the black and white cruiser that Nick and Judy were used to driving. Judy had assumed they would talk more about the case on the drive, but as it turned out Sobol just cranked the radio to a classic rock station, humming to himself as he drummed on the steering wheel while tearing down the backroads at outrageous speeds. Latran, apparently used to her partner's driving, had leaned her head against the window not ten minutes after they left the gas station and from the way her tongue was lolling out of her mouth she was almost certainly asleep.

The road curved down into a low lying stretch that cut across a dried out stream bed. For a minute the sun and the puffy white clouds were chopped up and hidden behind the branches of a stand of cottonwood trees. Then Sobol gunned the gas again, kicking up a huge rooster tail of dust, and the car shot uo over the crest of a hill. Stream bed and trees disappeared as if they had never been there at all, and once again the car was cutting through a sea of waving yellow grasses. Judy sat up a little straighter in her seat, trying to get a good view over the dashboard from her spot next to Nick in the back seat. There was something on the horizon.

Sobol turned off the radio, tapped the brake a little bit as he reached over to flick his partner on the arm. “Gloria. Gloria.  Wake up sunshine.”

The coyote muttered something that sounded a whole lot like “fuck you” before she yawned and sat up straighter in her seat. 

Rubbing at the side of her face where the fur had gone squished and flat against the window, Latran twisted around in her seat as best as she could to turn her attention towards Nick and Judy in the back.

“The Lightrunners and the other families at the compound are all fundamentalist dingoes.” Latran yawned, showing off her sharp teeth “So, you know. None of them speak. I'll interpret what they sign to me, and I'll talk out what I sign to them.”

“Are they deaf?” Nick asked 

“The dingoes? No. Just culturally mute. Do they not cover that at the Academy anymore?”

“Nah, we did the P&D training module.” Nick replied, and Judy nodded as well.

P&D stood for the Platypus and Dingo training, an overview of the two main mammal communities that tended to be insular and isolated from police interaction. It was about thirty PowerPoint slides, and the main message was to not get the department slapped with a discrimination lawsuit in the very rare instance that a police mammal would have to interact with members of either community. Not exactly super informative on the finer points.

Nick followed up “What I don't get is why you would need to sign  _ to _ them? If they're hearing, why not just ask questions and tell us what they sign back?”

“Fundy dingoes like these ones don't exactly  _ love _ outsiders.” Sobol said, voice sounding a little dark as he slowed the car even more. “They're always more cooperative with mammals that can fully communicate back and forth in DSL. More respectful, apparently.” Nick was getting the sense that there was no love lost between Sobol and the group they were about to visit.

Judy was jolted against her seatbelt as the car finally slammed to a stop outside of a rolling chain link gate. The fence on either side of it had to be at least eight feet tall, and stretched out to the horizon in either direction. Over the gate was a metal arch, and the welded letters secured across the top of it read LIGHTRUNNER INDUSTRIES.

On the driver's side of the gate was a middle aged dingo in a blue baseball cap leaning back in a lawn chair next to a 4x4. The utility vehicle was parked besides to what looked like a flagpole, but when Nick craned his head back to look up at it there was no flag. Just a flat circle of metal that had been polished to a shine. The dingo took his time sitting up and walking over to the car, and Sobol rolled down all of the windows as the yellow furred canine approached. Crossing his arms over his chest the dingo leant down to get a better view of them, chewing on a toothpick and looking unimpressed until he saw Latran in the passenger seat. Then his face split into a wide grin and he made his way over to Latran’s window, paws moving in a flurry of signs.

“Frank here says that he hasn't seen me in forever, wants to know how my youngest daughter is doing at college.” Latran said, before she started to sign back. “She's liking it. Thinks she wants to go into early childhood education. Told her it'll be payback for all the trouble she caused at that age.”

The dingo, Frank, braced his hands on his knees for a minute as he laughed soundlessly. Then he started to sign again.

“Are we here to visit or on official business? Official. Need to talk to Mayda Lightrunner. Why? News about Otis. Good news or bad news? That's what we need to see Mayda about, Frank. Can you let us through?”

The dingo nodded, walked over to the flagpole and started manipulating the ropes. Nick could see the metal disk swivel and catch the light. Then it tilted back and forth quickly, catching the sun and flashing in what might have been Morse code. Frank stopped for a minute, stared at the horizon until a series flashes came in reply. Then the dingo was signing to Latran again.

“Frank says we're good to go.”Latran translated “Oh, and he says Sobol better watch his damn speed on the other side of the gate or he can walk.”

Sobol grumbled under his breath as the dingo unlatched the gate, rolling it open and waving them through.

Despite the sour look on his face Sobol seemed to take the advice seriously, letting the car crawl along at little more than an idle. It was slow going. No one bothered to put their windows up, letting in the crisp fall breeze. Quite abruptly, the grasses on the right side of the road got much shorter. Out in the distance Judy could see a tractor pulling a machine that gathered up recently cut grass and popped out small rectangular bales. A flatbed truck kept pace slightly behind the baler, and a pack of young dingoes were tossing the blocks of grass up onto the back of it. Just like that, a light bulb went off in Judy’s head.

“Lightrunner! I knew I recognized that name! I walk right past the Lightrunner Organic Grasses in the grocery store every week. I can't believe it took me this long!”

Latran nodded. “They do a grains and soybeans too.  _ And _ they have a couple of contracts to farm crickets for the big bug burger chains. You'll see the bug barns here in a bit.”

What Latran had called the ‘bug barns’ turned out to be two rows of low slung quonset huts. Nick counted ten of the barns on each side of the road, and even though all of the doors on the buildings were closed he could still hear the chirping. Except with the windows of the car still down and what Nick could only imagine were millions and millions of little bugs making noise, the chirping was really more like a  _ roaring _ . 

As they passed by, a dingo came out of one bug barn wearing a dull grey set of coveralls with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows and a dust mask over her snout. Her eyes tracked the car as they cruised past slowly, not looking away even as she pushed the dust mask down around her neck and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. When Judy made eye contact she felt all the fur on her arms stand straight up, but then the car had passed by and left the rows of cricket barns behind.

After that, the road wound through a wide flat gravel area where a veritable fleet of heavy machinery and farm equipment were parked in orderly rows. Combines and their headers, tractors, trucks of all shapes and sizes, self propelled windrowers, threshers, disc mowers and wheel rakes and three or four different sizes of balers. Judy could recognize most of it at a glance, even though her parents had never had use for that much machinery on a family run vegetable farm.

None of it was cheap.

Then the car was idling through what looked like a small town - streets of houses and trailer homes, spaced out and interspersed with small barns and grain bins. There was a post office and a diner and a meeting hall, no telephone lines but more of the odd mirrored poles used for quick distance communication. Sobol slowed down to a complete crawl as the passed a one room schoolhouse with a playground outside that was swarming with little dingoes - climbing and running and roughhousing with each other, soundless except for the slap of footpaws on the dirt. Two identical pups wearing faded overalls seemed to be arguing over a soccer ball, snatching it back and forth from one another. Latran watched them signing to each other as the car rolled by, and had to choke down a surprised laugh.

“Bet they don't let their parents see ‘em sign like that.”

Nick could see now why Vasilije had called the place ‘dingotown’ - this wasn’t just a small group living off the grid. The compound was more like a small but self sustaining city - albeit one where all the mammals were the same species, part of the same cultural niche. Sobol finally pulled up and parked the car outside of a whitewashed two story house with a wraparound porch. It was one of the oldest buildings they had seen on the property, and Judy somehow got the impression that it was the center of everything even though she had only seen a small portion of the compound.

As they all got out of the car, an elderly dingo carrying a little puppy on her shoulders came out through the screen door. She was wearing an apron and a long blue skirt, both of which were covered in white floury paw prints. Even though the puppy was laughing silently and tugging on her ears to try and direct her where he wanted to go, the old dingo looked somber from the moment she set her eyes on Latran. 

The slamming of the four car doors closing seemed to echo through the yard. The dingo put the puppy down, made a few quick signs that had him hopping down the porch steps and skipping off down the street. Judy watched him go through the door of another house, and when she turned back around there were two burly guards standing on either side of the old dingo woman, staring at them blankly. Nick and Judy followed the detectives up on to the porch

“News about Otis?” Latran said, translating as the dingo started to sign. Then the coyote started to sign back. “Yes. What did we find? Mayda, let's go inside. No, she wants to know what happened to Otis.”

It was odd, listening to Latran translate both sides of the conversation in her emotionless tone of voice even though everyone could see that the dingo woman, Mayda, was becoming increasingly distraught. Her paws were frantic as she continued to sign with Latran.

“Where is Otis? Did we find him? Did we find him alive?” at that point one of the big guard dingoes started to sign something that was cut off with a glare from Mayda and another furious flurry of signs “He said Ma'am we should probably go inside, and she's telling him that if Otis has gone then she wants to find out about it under the sky and the stars.”

Nick wasn't sure he really understood the meaning of that last bit, given that it was the middle of the day and there wasn't a single star visible. Had to be some weird dingo thing. But he didn't get a chance to think too much about it before

“We recovered remains that we believe to be those of Otis Lightrunner last night.” Latran moved both paws together in front of her face before she lowered them to her sides, and Mayda seemed to crumple. She hid her face against the shoulder of one of the big guards, shoulders hitching as she started to cry silently and finally allowed herself to be led inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Extra [headcanon notes ](http://bingitoff.tumblr.com/post/143230679402/tz-worldbuilding-notes-pt-1) on fundamentalist dingo culture


	5. Chapter 5

A loose floorboard squeaked beneath one of Judy’s paws, and Nick only just managed to stop himself from jumping at the sound. It was ridiculous, psychosomatic. All the windows on the house were open, the ever present background noise of insects buzzing and wind blowing and engines running in the distance were still there when they listened for them. Yet the hush that seemed to have settled over the building was undeniable.

The ZPD mammals followed the dingoes through an enormous, immaculate kitchen that looked more suited to a large restaurant than a home. It was the culinary equivalent of the collection of farm implements they had seen on the drive in - stainless steel prep tables, industrial sized mixers, a huge griddle with a range hood, rows and rows of cabinets that could have held enough equipment to make breakfast for the crew of an aircraft carrier. Four ovens sat in a row against the closest wall, radiating heat. When Judy peeked through the glass doors as they passed she could see loaves of bread and enormous sheets of biscuits baking inside. Nick crossed his arms over his chest as his nose twitched at the smell, hoping against hope that his stomach wouldn't rumble at the most inappropriate moment. 

They were led into a living room that was lined with packed bookcases along every space of wall that wasn't cut out by a window. As opposed to the almost industrial kitchen, this room seemed cozy, well lived in. There were four couches facing each other in a square, and the center area was strewn with coloring books and crayons and bright alphabet blocks. It sort of reminded Judy of her parents’ house, except for the fact that there was no television set, no computers or phones.

When Mayda Lightrunner sat on one of the couches, the two dingo bodyguards remained standing behind her. Latran and Sobol took their seats on the parallel couch facing the dingoes, leaving Judy and Nick to scramble up on to one of the couches that was perpendicular to the others.

Latran started to sign to the guards. “Can one of you go and get Sarah? No. Why? Posted here, have to stay here. Alright, then can you get on the flasher and ask for her to come down?” That finally got a nod in response, and the larger of the two guards left the room.

Nick had taken off his sunglasses when they had entered the house, but now he had to squint hard to avoid having to put them back on. The couch he had Judy had chosen was facing the largest window in the room. It looked out over the dusty street that they had driven in on, and since the bodyguard had left it looked like every one of those mirrored poles in town was flashing at once. Nick couldn't make out the poles themselves, but he could sure as hell see the messages they were transmitting even if he couldn't  _ understand _ them. One of the damned things was directed right at the house, reflecting bright bursts of light into the fox’s sensitive eyes. 

Then the lights stopped flashing and the guard returned, paws moving before he was even fully across the threshold of the room.

“Says she can't come.” Latran translated “Did you tell her that we need to talk to her about Otis? Yes. And she says she can't come.”

Judy had expected that Latran would keep pressing until some mammal went and brought Sarah - whoever she was. The fur on the back of Latran’s neck had puffed out a little bit during the most recent exchange, but much to Judy’s surprise the coyote just dropped it. Huh. Judy’s nose was twitching like crazy, but she didn't it have the chance to bust out with any one of the millions of questions that were tumbling around in her head before Latran shrugged her shoulders and turned back to the old lady.

“Mayda…Mrs. Lightrunner. The missing mammal report for your son was filed three and a half years ago. Have you received any information regarding what may have happened to him since then?” Latran said “No. She says that she never gave up hope. He was the youngest of six from her first litter, she never thought that he could really be gone.”

The dingo had stopped crying, but the fur on her face was still damp and matted. Out on the porch, Judy had thought that maybe Mayda was Otis’ wife. The dingo had seemed older, sure, but still strong - walking around with the puppy on her shoulders like he weighed nothing. Her fur had looked honey colored, almost golden outside in the sun - Mrs. Lightrunner had seemed like she could have been close to Latran’s age. Now that Judy could get a good look without having to crane her head back, the rabbit realized that Mayda was much older than she had originally thought, fur gone nearly white with age. Sitting there, folded in on herself with silent grief, it looked like all the years and all the weight of Mayda Lightrunner’s life had caught up to her at once. 

“So you had a reason to believe that he was still alive?” Sobol asked. This time it was Sobol with the pad of paper, taking notes since Latran’s paws were otherwise occupied.

Mrs. Lightrunner made no attempt to reply to Sobol’s question even though she had to have heard it, not until Latran had finished signing it to her. Only then did the dingo shake her head.

“No. But it was so easy to pretend he wasn't really gone. He would -” Mrs. Lightrunner’s paws stuttered for a second, as did Latran’s translation before they both continued. “He used to travel along the perimeter, checking the fence. Making repairs if it got damaged. It was his favorite job. He usually took a vehicle, but sometimes he would walk along the length of it by himself. She says that sometimes he would be gone for days.”

Another pause, then “It made it easy for her to think that maybe he was just taking a long time to walk home. That he was still out there, patrolling along the fence line. She would. Each year she would worry about him being out there on his own when the first snow came. When the rains were hard.”

In the end, Mayda Lightrunner wasn't able to provide them with any information besides what had already been documented in the missing mammal file. 

Her son had been forty-seven when he disappeared and was in good health. He was the father of eight sons. He had been a devout follower of their ways for his entire life. When Otis had not returned after five days, the family had searched all across the compound and found nothing - no damage to the fence, no supplies that Otis would have been carrying. No body. Then his wife gone into town to file the report. 

Otis had disappeared into the prairie, become little more than a memory. 

There was a thick crowd of dingoes gathered in the yard when they left the house, escorted out by the bodyguard who hadn't stayed behind with Mayda. Nick wondered which ones were related to Otis. Maybe they all were. He couldn't read anything from their somber faces as the dingoes watched them leave - except for the gusting wind, the yard was silent.

As police officers, Nick and Judy mostly dealt with events that were immediate, wrongs that they could right in real time - arrest a thief, catch a vandal, write a traffic ticket. All of it had an immediate consequence. Stolen goods were returned. Property would no longer be damaged. A driver wouldn't continue putting lives at risk by speeding. Judy was starting to realize that she might have taken that facet of the job for granted. With the Nighthowlers and the mammals gone savage, even before she knew the true scope of the case, Judy had known somehow that she would find them alive. She  _ had _ to find them alive. It had barely occurred to her that there was another option. Judy had known that her determination and perseverance could have an effect on the the endgame. With this case, though…

There was a dingo who could have been killed at any time in the last three and a half years, and eighteen rodent victims that they knew almost nothing about. All of them were already dead, the crimes obscured behind a grey fog of time. The best thing that they could hope to do would be to bring the killer to justice. It should have helped to think about how stopping the perpetrator would prevent more murders, to know that they could bring some closure to the families of the victims. Instead, it all  just congealed into a strange hollowed out feeling that settled into Judy’s gut as they drove away.

When they got to the edge of the property the gate was already open for them, and a different dingo was waiting in Frank's place. She was slender, middle aged, and she carried a puppy on her hip. The pup was probably four or five, and when the car slowed to a stop he popped one of his thumbs into his mouth and started to suck on it. It took Nick only a second to recognize that the puppy was the same one that had been riding on Mayda Lightrunner’s shoulders earlier. 

Latran rolled down her window. The dingo set the puppy down on the grass and signed something to him that Nick could have guessed meant ‘stay put’ even before Latran translated it. The pup sat and watched with wide, curious eyes as his mom walked over and stuck her paws through the open passenger side window. Judy realized after a couple of seconds that Latran wasn't translating anything that the dingo was signing to her. 

The coyote had been a surprisingly consistent interpreter throughout the entire visit, relaying everything in her odd monotone. Latran had even spoken out the things that the dingoes had signed amongst themselves within her view, which Judy had thought was odd until she realized that being able to see another dingo signing must have been like overhearing a conversation. But for this exchange, Latran was still and silent.

This dingo seemed determined not to be overheard or overseen - with her paws stuck in the the car, no mammals at a distance would be able to see the words she was forming. The way she was standing meant that she had her back to the pup, blocking even his view of her paws as she signed quickly to Latran.

Even though Judy was desperate to know what was happening, her instinct told her that speaking up might shatter the moment. Judy’s nose twitched with curiosity as she shared a look with Nick across the back seat. Then Latran reached up, taking one of the dingo’s paws in her own and squeezing it for a second before the dingo stepped back without preamble, turning away to retrieve her pup.

“Can I go now?” Sobol asked. When Latran nodded in reply, he hit the gas with all the fervor that he had been repressing within the compound. The wheels spun out on the gravel before they finally caught, and the car shot away. 

“What was that about?” Judy’s curiosity was killing her. She couldn't take it any more and she sat up a little straighter in her seat as if it would help her get the coyote’s attention.

Latran was quiet for a long time and they all sat in silence as Sobol drove them past the never-ending acres of waving grass. Judy couldn't see the detective's face very well from her spot in the back seat, but the set of Latran’s ears and the way that her posture was slightly less slouched than normal told Judy that the coyote was on edge.

“That was Sarah, Otis’ wife.” Latran finally replied, speaking up only after the car had wound down into the valley with the dry stream and the cottonwood trees. “She asked me not to say anything out loud at the gate, in case someone was listening.”

That got Sobol’s attention. “And?” For one heartstopping minute the pronghorn took his eyes off of the road to look at his partner, a move that took at least a year off of Nick’s life.

“She said that in the last months before he disappeared, Otis had started to talk in his sleep. Not sleep signing - speaking. Out loud.” Latran said “Sarah never told Mayda, didn't even put it in the police report. She's kept it a secret because she didn't want her family to be shunned or for Otis to be disgraced if he turned up alive.”

“Did she remember anything that he said?” Judy asked

“Sort of. The weather, repairing the fence, the kids. The only things she told me that she specifically remembered him saying were ‘It's been a dry year’ and ‘I named them after my brothers’. The second one would have referred to Otis naming his oldest sons after two of his brothers who had died in a grain entrapment accident. Mundane stuff like that.”

“Two of your siblings dying counts as mundane?” Nick asked, taken aback.

“Well, yeah. Mayda had…” Latran had to stop and think about it for a second “twenty six kids. Luca and Howie have been dead for over thirty years now.”

Judy had 275 siblings and came from a farming family herself, but she didn't think that she would ever consider any of her brothers or sisters dying to be  _ mundane _ . Still, she was hardly surprised by the callousness. In the short time that Judy had known Latran, Judy had already realized that the coyote wasn't the most sensitive of mammals.

“The point I'm trying to get at” Latran continued “is that it wasn't  _ what _ Otis was saying that disturbed his wife. It was the way  he was saying it. Sarah told me that she had never heard him speak while he was awake, but when he would talk in his sleep it sounded natural - as if he’d had plenty of practice talking to some othe mammal.” 


	6. Chapter 6

Whatever uninspired mammals that had been responsible the Prairie Heights police station also obviously had a paw in the design of the District Hall. A directory posted inside the front door listed the levels that a mammal could go to for everything from a marriage license to a building permit to a meeting with their parole officer. Luckily Sobol seemed to know exactly where he was going, leading the way through featureless hallways and down a flight of stairs until they reached a frosted glass door with a plaque that proclaimed it to be the home of  Property Records .

Beyond the door was a large room with seafoam green walls. It was decorated with a posters showing zoning regulations and a couple of maps that showed the entirety of the Prairie Heights biome, not to metion one haggard looking potted plant in the corner. There were a couple rows of different sized chairs where mammals could wait of the place ever got busy. Nick suspected that there were more chairs than there were visitors to this room in a week, much less at one time. A large desk was positioned in front of a wall that had another frosted glass door and a series of translucent rodent travel tubes that disappeared into an adjacent room.

The elephant behind the desk at the records office wore a bulky, bubblegum pink cable knit sweater. She had been reading that a well worn copy of The Great Catsby and talking on the phone when the group had walked in. They must have stood there tapping their paws for a good ten minutes while she ‘yep’-ed, ‘nope’-ed, and ‘mmhmmm’-ed her way through the call. After she had hung the phone up with her trunk she finally deigned acknowledge their presence and looked down at them, unimpressed.

“I said I would call you Robert, I don’t have anything for you yet.”

“You haven't found  _ anything _ ?” Sobol, a mammal not overly gifted with patience, had been grinding his teeth together during the wait. Now Judy was worried he might actually crack a molar “Look, Lucy, I asked you to please, please make this one your top priority and -”

“And I  _ did _ .” She cut him off, rolling her eyes. “I've had Charlie searching through the file catalog all day. It's not digitized yet.”

“If someone owned the property they would have had to pay taxes each year or else the district would have a lien on it.” Judy volunteered “Wouldn't a recent record like that be on the computer?

Sobol snapped his fingers, turned back to the elephant with a glint in his eye. “One of those two things, Lucy. C’mon, you're killing me here.”

“Hmm, what a great idea. Can't believe I didn't think of that. Oh, wait.”

Lucy glared as she bent the page of her paperback to save her place. Then she started slamming her fingers across the keyboard of her computer with such force that Judy was surprised the plastic didn't shatter - there must have been a good niche market for elephant-proof keyboards. After a few seconds Lucy rotated the screen to face them.

“35457 Unincorporated Rural Route 32, Prairie Heights, Zootopia. Yes, the address is listed in the system. But see the blank space underneath it? That means that all the records for the property are still hard copy, which means that it's Charlie’s responsibility to find them. So why don't you bother him instead?”

“Fine.” 

The elephant pushed her rolling chair back from the desk, spinning around in a motion well practiced by generations of office workers. Once she had rolled to a stop next to the wall she reached out to tap on the rodent tube. Lucy’s heavy hand made a loud, hollow clonking noise against the thick plastic of the tube, and she kept up the tapping with no apparent rhythm until a small brown squirrel appeared, scampering out to scold the larger mammal.

“Dammit Lucy, always with the tapping - we have an intercom! Call me on the intercom!” The squirrel’s tail puffed out, one paw pressed against the side of his head as he used the other to point an accusing finger at Lucy. 

“ _ Well _ , maybe if you would respond to the intercom we wouldn't have this problem.”

Nick was good at reading tone and body language for all sorts of mammals, but even he couldn't quite tell if their exchange was the good natured bickering of close colleagues or thinly veiled hostility.

“I'm busy! You know I'm busy!” Charlie shot back. He looked like he was about to set off on a full fledged, fur flying tirade before he realized that there were other mammals in the office. “Uh, hey. Can we help you?”

“These are the detectives that put in the request for the property records for the place on U.R.R. 32.” Lucy said, sounding smug “They were just wondering why  _ you _ hadn't found anything for them yet.”

“I've been looking all morning. In my defence it's, uh. It's a real mess back there.” Charlie twitched his head over his shoulder to indicate the room beyond the tubes. “I only joined this department a couple months back. Good thing it's been relatively slow - I still haven't figured out how the last guy had everything organized.”

“The last guy was your cousin. You could just  _ call _ him.”

“Second cousin, Lucy. Second cousin, once removed. And we've been over this. I can't just  _ call _ him because he moved and I don't have his new  _ num _ ber.” the squirrel shook his head, straightened his tie a little bit as he turned his attention back to the detectives “Sorry. Sorry about that. I'll keep looking until I find it.”

“Could we just take a quick look around the records room? We might be able to help go through the files.” Judy offered

“Sure, knock yourselves out. But don't say if didn't warn you.”  Charlie darted away  through the tube, but reappeared almost immediately. “You big’uns might have to squeeze in.” 

If Nick had been wondering why Lucy the elephant didn't help with searching the paper files, his question was answered the moment he stepped into the record storage area. The room was technically big enough to accommodate even the largest of mammals, but that technicality didn't count for much. It was filled up almost wall to wall with tight packed rows of shelves that reached the ceiling, all of them crammed full with manilla file folders. 

No wonder the district had a hard time hiring help for the job. Grey concrete walls, no windows. It was the type of room that could drive a mammal to drink. 

The only color came from the hodgepodge of different colored rodent tubes that Charlie used to navigate the room. Winding up and around and in between the shelves in no decipherable layout, the tubes were open sided where they ran along the files, presumably so the mammal using them could reach out and access the folders. When Judy peered at the shelf closest to her she saw files for 35 Tumbleweed Drive, 1919 Aspen Ave, 202 Main Street... The squirrel hadn’t been kidding, there was no discernable system to the way that the files were organized.

“Yeah, that's the face everyone makes.” Charlie said, head sticking out of one of the tubes “I'd be happy to have the help, but I understand if you'd rather pass.”

“You got a business card or something?” Latran asked “We gotta get going.”

Charlie hopped out of the tube in a practiced motion, landing in front of Nick and holding out a small card. Charlie Hysham, Prarie Heights Data Specialist, ext. 213

“That’s the extension for Lucy’s desk, don't have my own line back here. I'll get in touch as soon as I find the file.” 

Then the squirrel was gone, disappearing into a ground level tube before Nick could thank him. He offered the card up to Latran, but the detective just shook her head so Nick tucked the card into one of his pockets next to the lint and the spare change. Judy waited until Sobol had exchanged a terse goodbye with the elephant and they were back out in the hallway before she asked

“Where to next?”

“Huh?”

“We got out of there pretty quick. Is there a new lead for us to follow up on?”

“Nah, I’m just starving.” Latran tucked her paws in the pockets of her trenchcoat, stomach rumbling as if to emphasize her point. “It's way past lunch.”

Time had flown by - most of the day had been eaten up driving to and from the Lightrunner compound, and it was much closer to supper time than lunch. Sobol took them to a hole in the wall diner that was clearly the favorite spot of the District 8 law enforcement mammals - Nick recognized Detective Quintus sitting at the counter with a polar bear, a bunch of cops who they had been briefly introduced to at the crime scene. Judy hadn’t thought that she was hungry until she looked at the menu and realized that she wanted to order everything on it, even the Casserole Surprise.

They were halfway through their food when Detective Quintus wandered over to their booth. He had his phone out in one paw, tapping and scrolling through something on the screen as he asked

“Did Mike call you?”

Latran furrowed her brow, looking up from her bowl of chili “No.”

“Shit, really?” For the first time since he had walked over, the puma looked up from his phone. “Well, a bunch of bodies turned up in Swampopolis. Looks like it's mob related - all rodents, and the bodies were fresh. Well, fresh-ish.” 

Quintus set his phone down on the table, spun it around so they could read the headline - Bodies of Seven Nutria Discovered in Suspected Gangland Slaying.

“I heard Vasilije bitching that he won't get his turn with the rodentia specialist for a week now thanks to this.” Quintus said. “That was for your case, wasn't it?”

“Fuck.” Sobol rubbed his face in both hands before he looked to the ceiling, as if asking for strength “Yeah, it was. Thanks for the heads up Ed.”

After Quintus had left, Judy finished off her carrot juice in one long swallow. “What does that mean for us?”

“Well we aren't exactly flush with leads at the moment.” Sobol scowled down at his salad. “We don't know who owns the property. We don't know the species, much less the identity, of eighteen of our victims. And the known associates of the one victim who we've managed to identify are, quite literally, not talking.”

“Well, Otis was talking.”

“Yeah, Otis was talking. Allegedly. But he ain't talking anymore.”

“But he had been talking to _someone_ for a long time.” Latran turned her attention to Nick and Judy. “Those dingoes don't even listen to the radio. My translating today was the most spoken word most of ‘em will hear all year. Talking doesn't come easy to them, the ones who leave or get excommunicated. They're all fucking awful with the 'T' sound for some reason.  Yoo ca-an al-awayse deyll be-cause dey da-alk lahk dis fer a co-ople of yeayrs.”

Latran’s voice went halting and strange on her last sentence, the vowels too flat or drawn out, some of the consonants garbled in a way that made Judy’s ears twitch. A little insensitive maybe, but it got the point across

The coyote continued. “Sarah saying that Otis sounded like he was used to speaking… I would guess that he’d been meeting with an outsider during his perimeter walks. Had been for long enough that his sleep talk would sound natural.”

“So how would we find who he was talking to?” Nick asked 

“One of Otis’ brothers broke ties with the group about two decades ago. I would start with him. Otherwise” Latran shrugged “Not a whole lot of ideas. I don't think we'll get much more cooperation from the Lightrunners.”

“Could we start pulling the files on all the missing rodents in the system? That'll give us a head start when the medical examiner gets back to us on the species.” Judy volunteered

“Yeah.” Sobol agreed, even though he didn't look happy about it. “It would be better if we could divide and conquer on it, though. I'm not holding my breath waiting for Vasilije, and we  _ need _ to know who that property belongs to.”

“Two on the missing rodents, two on the property records.” Latran scraped her spoon across the bottom of her bowl a couple of times, chased down the last bits of chili with a crust of bread “We'll get started on it tomorrow after we go to see Otis’ brother. You two are staying at Cactus Jack's?”

The bighorn sheep who had taken their orders came by to drop off the checks, and the conversation paused as he cleared away their empty plates

“Chief Ujarak offered to put us up there, but we haven't taken him up on it.” Nick replied once the bighorn had left, digging his wallet out of his pocket. 

“Hmm. Well you might want to think about it.” Sobol said “No telling how long this thing will last. Might want to look into the commuter rail if you're determined to keep going back and forth - that drive’s gonna get real old, real quick.”

**Author's Note:**

> I write and edit everything on my phone, so if there are any particularly heinous errors please point them out to me :) I am always a slut for Doritos/comments/kudos!
> 
> [tumblr ](http://www.bingitoff.Tumblr.com)  
>  


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